CODEWITHSUNDEEP
cstringunixchar
user1450027
user1450027

Reputation: 41

Get backspace into C char*

I want to return a null-terminated char* that contains a backspace character without malloc'ing it. Specifically, I want the string to be {backspace-character, space-character, backspace-character, null-character} and nothing else.

For a "regular" string, I know I could say

char* s = "regular";
return s;

Then s is safe to pass around to other functions because it points to the string regular, which is a global declared outside of the stack. However, the only way I can think of accomplishing this with backspace would be

char* s = {0x08, ' ', 0x08, '\0'};
return s;

but this seems problematic because now the array I declared is on the stack, and will not be valid for use in the calling function. Again, I don't want to malloc this string because I don't want to deal with having to free it later. What can I do?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 714

Answers (3)

Jim Balter
Jim Balter

Reputation: 16406

In addition to using a string constant per the other answers, you can do

static char s[] = {0x08, ' ', '0x08, '\0'};
return s;

Upvotes: 0

gcbenison
gcbenison

Reputation: 11963

You can include a backspace in a string literal as \b e.g. "\b \b"

Upvotes: 3

SeedmanJ
SeedmanJ

Reputation: 444

char*   s = "\b \b";

is this what you are looking for ?

Upvotes: 1

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